War variant

[Ubiaratne the weird]

I was wondering why a lot of dms are obsessed with their nobles or whatever having these gigantic wars with hundreds of people in them. If the world you run is magic rich, rich in feuds and fighting, and your nobles are rich, Why dont they just spend all their money on magicking up one or two people until they are really really powerful, or training a sick nasty warrior retainer and having that one person just decimate the opponents hundreds of soldiers in minutes? I mean, with all the templates and suchlike you have, eventually one of these nobles is going to get the bright idea of hiring on a couple of quarter dragon-quarter beholder-quarter medusa-quarter giantoids and sicking them on their enemies as a sort of strike squad of the gods. I would think that in a world with all of these great monsters and magicks the nobles would just have a few extremely powerful monster-knights duking it out somewhere while the commoners are happily doing their work, not having to get up every hour or so to go and get slaughtered by a couple of wizards with fireball and lightning bolt. Seriously, one of these ungodly smart npcs is going to figure out that he can FRIGGIN DESTROY A WHOLE FRIGGIN ARMY WITH A FRIGGIN SQUADRON OF GODS DAMNED OGRE MAGES instead of having to rouse thousands of commoners for battle. In the campaigns i run, the nobles have one or two of these amazing champions, paying them in loot and privledges for their services, and occasionally sending them out to kill one another. You still haved the great peasent revolting scheme, since the peasents are usually tired of being rode roughshod by the champions, and you dont have to worry about heirs and such when the noble is killed. The champion, being the most powerful person in the region anyway, just takes their place and hires a slightly more powerful champion so he can live the life of luxury. As to why all of these powerful champions are obeying lords like this, five words: mark of justice when young. what think? it worked well in my world.

 

[Meloncov]

Try actually occupying an area with your squad of four ogre mages. It wont work.

That being said, it's highly debatable whether armies have a place in D&D worlds. If you want to have big battles, you can justify it, basically saying "powerful units counter powerful units, while weaker units slam it out." If you don't want them, then don't have them.

Perhaps the most realistic solution is to model D&D warfare after modern warfare. Sure, a tank can destroy dozens of infantry; that doesn't mean that infantry don't have a place.

 

[LostSoul]

Just had an odd thought.

High-level = power. Power = nobility.

How do you get to be high-level? By adventuring, of course. You also get nice loot this way too.

So what do the nobles do? They want to make sure that only nobles can adventure.

There are a lot of implications to this line of thought.

edit: I agree with the original poster. I see something along the lines of a "War of Assassins" being more likely than armies going against each other. You might have an army of War1s to keep the peace, but they are more like a police force than what we think of an army.

There might be some sort of ritualized secession, where the ruler of any lands is the guy with the token (a signet ring, a sceptre, a sword, etc.). This would be so that the normal guys don't get squashed in an all-out war - they just switch sides because they know that fighting a hopeless battle will lead to their deaths.

 

[Roger]

Why dont they just spend all their money on magicking up one or two people until they are really really powerful, or training a sick nasty warrior retainer and having that one person just decimate the opponents hundreds of soldiers in minutes?

It's a quick road to a coup d'etat.



Cheers,
Roger

 

[Dirigible]

d a setting like that. Powerful magelords duked it out with spells while bands of fairly high level fighters (who gained spell resistance as a class ability in this campaign) fought each other, handled riot control, and tried to get into melee and distract the enemy caster.

 

[tetsujin28]

Paragraphs. They're not just for breakfast, anymore.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Basically D&D warfare is more akin to modern war than medieval war. You have your airforce, navy and army as well as special forces. The different branches try to reach superiority in it's element and once that is established they really get to go to town on the opposition.

Once the enemy mages have been slain in a big magic battle showdown the surving victors can wreak havoc upon the enemy army. That's when the fireballs and lightnings bolts really start to rain down.

Albert Einstein said that he didn't know what weapons will be used in the 3rd world war but that the 4th world war will be fought with sticks and stones. By the same token all the powerful mages and high level fighters will destroy each other and rulership will belong to whom has the last unit of commoners still intact.

 

[Nifft]

IMC, there are wars of honor (between factions of the same race, or racial alliance), secret wars (coups, trade wars), and then there are wars of extermination (between Humans & Goblinoids, for example).

Wars of honor are fought by champions.

Secret wars are 'fought' by politicians, assassins, wizards and merchants.

Wars of extermination are all-out war, and "warriors" are trained because, hey, it's better to have the little guys armed and theoretically dangerous than to have them just loafing around, waiting to catch an arrow and die. A level 1 warrior is more dangerous than he otherwise would have been (expert, commoner), and is thus a net gain for the group in question, even if he's still not all that dangerous.

Cheers, -- N